In the past, I’ve argued against authority on both principled and consequential grounds. Institutions like the state don’t have legitimate authority over you because we don’t own other people, and you can’t delegate an authority you don’t have to an institution to exercise on your behalf.

On a purely practical level, authority leads to irrationality and inefficiency because it filters and distorts information flow and causes decision-makers to operate in a purely imaginary world. That was true of Gosplan in the old USSR, and every Fortune 500 corporate headquarters is for all intents and purposes just a mini-Gosplan. Authority leads to socially suboptimal outcomes because decision-makers are able to externalize the negative consequences of their decisions on subordinates and appropriate the positive consequences for themselves.

But a lot of people don’t find such intellectual arguments convincing. They don’t feel them in their gut.

So this time I’m going to attack it from a different angle: Authority is bad because of the way it makes you feel.

Imagine you’re driving along, and you look in your rearview mirror and see a police car behind you. Do you feel confident and relieved, thinking “I’m so glad I’m being protected and served”? I doubt it. Your first thought is most likely of how soon you can lose the cop, either by making a turn or letting them pass you. As you continue to see the police car behind you, your thoughts almost certainly turn to whether you did something wrong, or whether you’re inadvertently doing something wrong right now the cop can seize on to pull you over. And the longer the police car stays behind you, the more turns it follows you through, the louder that panicky voice in your head becomes: “I’m in trouble! I must’ve done something wrong.”

In short, you’re reduced to feeling like a “bad” child in the face of an adult authority figure.

Remember when you actually were a child, and your mom or dad said, “Come here. We need to have a talk”? Or when your teacher called you aside for a “little talk,” or you got summoned to the principal’s office? You felt like the authority figure behind the desk was a hundred feet tall and looking at you, miserable little worm that you were, through a microscope. You felt like a puppy that had just been caught piddling on the rug.

You probably feel the same way as an adult, at work, when your boss calls you into her office. If you don’t know what it’s about, you start racking your brain trying to think of a million and one things you might have done wrong. Will she be mad at me? Will I get yelled at? Will I lose my job? I’m in trouble. I’M BAD.

At the most fundamental level, this is why authority is evil. It reduces you to the feelings of fear and powerlessness you experienced as a child. It makes you think you’re bad. It makes you think you must have done something wrong.

This isn’t a good way for anyone to feel. And a society in which we spend a major part of our lives under the control of institutions directed by authority figures with the power to make us feel that way, is a fundamentally sick society.

Looking at things from the other direction, authority is bad because of the way it makes you feel when you identify with it — like other people are bad. Whenever there’s a news story online about someone being beaten up by a cop, the comments are bound to include people saying things like “Well, that ought to teach them a lesson. When a cop tells you to do something, you do it!” A dismaying share of American political discourse, especially from the Right, involves accusing one’s opponent of being “soft on” this or that, promising to “get tough on” the other thing, and calling for a whole host of outgroups or dissidents — protestors, disobedient foreign countries, gays, racial minorities, women, “illegal aliens,” etc. — to be “taught a lesson” or “shown who’s boss.”

People who view the world through this framework, typically, were beaten (literally or figuratively) by authority until they saw identifying with authority and redirecting their suppressed rage against the enemies of authority as the only way of escaping the double bind. They learned to love Big Brother.

A society that creates this mindset is also sick.

Dealing with other human beings — all other human beings — as equals, confident and unafraid, is the right way to live. It’s the only right way to live.

12 comments

This is an example of what I'd like to see more of from the libertarian left–momentary excursions from core anti-statism to a more generic anti-authoritarianism. In particular:

"In short, you’re reduced to feeling like a 'bad' child in the face of an adult authority figure."

Something that bothers me far more than the de-skilling of work is the infanilization of workers. You see it full force in the application process for retail/restaurant and other low-status jobs (but more jobs of more types recently) in which applicants are administered insulting questionnaires ( http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/where-to-fi… ) that seem to be asking whether they understand the most rudimentary ideas about hygiene or punctuality, or imply an assumption that larceny no longer violates universal social norms.

I'd like to point out that this is a problem with some authority some of the time and not a problem with authority in and of itself. I'm sure we can all relate to having a great deal of fear when approaching an authority figure knowing full well we did nothing wrong but are powerless. I think much of this happens only in a wider context of violence, though. Imagine we are in a much freer society, and we also work for a boss. Much of the fear we have in approaching the boss during a conflict is over being fired or even the threat of having it taken away. But as I think C4SS and other left-libertarian organizations have done a good job demonstrating, in a freer society workers will have much more luck working on their terms. So when a boss approaches you in such a state of affairs, you know he might actually have a legitimate gripe.

This makes sense until you consider the question of how a stateless society will handle troublemakers ranging from serial killers to DUI drivers. If a general assembly or a mob punishes or even uses restraint in defense of the victims, then the organizer of the general assembly or mob is in effect as an authority figure. If, on the other hand, specialized personnel are selected to handle troublemakers, then these personnel also become in effect authority figures.

It's not enough to protest treating adults "like children", as long as we consider it acceptable to treat children "like children". Any society which considers it normal to introduce curious young minds into the world by subjecting them to a regimen of orders and fear will find a free society for adults an unreliable proposition at best.

Dictatorship doesn't begin with Hitler, Stalin, the creatures in congress or the sadists in the corporate boardroom. All of these evils are made possible by the everyday banality of evil in the shape of father and mother and teacher (public or private, it seldom matters). If you want to know whether a person really believes in liberty in her heart, ask her whether it's a swell idea to force children into uniforms, feed them a dogma to recite and believe, and regiment their motions at the classroom or the diner table. These are the social forces which produce ready servants for despotisms. And we take them for granted all around us.

If you really mean freedom. there is no getting around the fact that the first institutions which teach us to sacrifice our souls are the church, the family, and the school system.

I fully agree. Unfortunately I had to restrict the scope of my commentary to stay within newspaper column length restrictions. I did talk about childhood enculturation to authority here: http://c4ss.org/content/10652
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The most creative, productive work does not occur under the yoke of authority. It's not conducted for fear of punishment — it must be autonomous and meaningful. Our entire production system is rooted in negative reinforcement and fear rather than reward and intellectual freedom.

On a purely practical level, authority leads to irrationality and inefficiency because it filters and distorts information flow and causes decision-makers to operate in a purely imaginary world.

No. Rather, that is one of the particular temptations to which it is prone. But there have been ample cases (usually towards the beginnings of a regime, or whatever) in which those in charge deliberately went out and got information without going through established channels, for pretty much these reasons. Haroun al-Raschid famously roamed Baghdad incognito, the early Ming emperors sent out low key staff to bypass the mandarins and court eunuchs, and Louis XIV made good use of the intendants that his earlier ministers like Richelieu and Mazarin had introduced. Then comes decadence…

Thank you. We need more of these types of posts which provide an "anarchist squint" on society. So much of what we value in life such as law, language, money, mores, cities, customs and culture emerged spontaneously without top-down authority. Once people truly understand this then anarchy will just become a customary way of looking at social phenomena and the state will stand out clearly in relief as the superfluous entity it is.

There are times when 'one' (a parent for example) does know better, FOR the 'other' (a child) and should use might or strength (authority); but only for a little while! This is an indication of what we might (again) refer to as the Tao (or Great Way). The Tao is very fluid and shifting and supple and yet contradictorily, is also fixed and unyielding.

The Tao operates beyond the range of ordinary human intellect or emotion, but includes, necessarily, these things.

What work we do, should always be done in earnest awareness of and struggle with (yet also surrender to) this Tao or Way of Greatness.

Very good article.

The state, and/or our customary authoritative forms and prejudices, are very far off the Path for the most part.

Let us just say that I distinctly dislike comment moderation (moderators) and censorship, primarily because it is so overdone and this 'overdoneness' is a victory for the state and for authoritarianism in general. Over-zealous censorship (of any type) promotes over-sensitivity (emotional) and stupidity (intellectual), both these being highly integral and necessary to continued state and authoritarian control….

I abandon sites quickly and stop reading them (and no longer attempt any comment) if I feel or preceive the abuse of the censor tool.

Something worth looking up if you haven't seen it years ago is the prison experiments conducted by Philip Zombardo. He also does lectures on what causes evil and often one factor is authority over one another. Another interesting thing to note about authority is the logical fallacy against authority, simply because an authority figure says something doesn't make it logical (look at advertorials) nor right. I don't understand why adults must be treated like children, there has to be a better way to ensure morality than threatening people and enslaving them. The most frustating thing about it is with my health status no one even wants to enslave me, it's like I can't even be something I hate to think about. Some are not more equal than others, we are all equal when given a chance, no one should be in authority above another. Authority situations seem to create more evil than they dispel.